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Chile: 29 trucks burned in attack, no injuries reported

Chile: 29 trucks burned in attack, no injuries reported | iNFOnews.ca
A police investigator walks past a row of charred trucks in San Jose de La Mariquina, in Chile's Los Rios region, Monday, Aug. 28, 2017. Hooded men burned several dozen trucks belonging to the privately owned Chilean company Sotraser SA. The attack occurred 800 kilometers, about 500 miles, south of Santiago, where groups of hooded men continually carry out violent actions mainly directed at large loggers in the area, a land that centuries ago belonged to the Mapuches, the native Indians of Chile. (Miguel Angel Bustos/Aton Chile via AP)

SANTIAGO, Chile – Twenty-nine were burned in the south-central part of Chile early Monday, a week after 18 trucks were torched in neighbouring areas.

Authorities said the latest arson attack happened before dawn in Los Rios region, about 500 miles (800 kilometres) south of the Chilean capital. The region borders an area where activists in the Mapuche indigenous group are demanding recovery of ancestral territory.

Prosecutors say a handwritten pamphlet signed by the Mapuche group Weichan Auka Mapu was found at the site. The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks in the bordering Araucania region.

A radical faction of Mapuche in Araucania has occupied and burned farms and lumber trucks to demand the return of land. Police have been accused of violent abuses, including storming into Mapuche homes during raids and shooting rubber bullets indiscriminately at women and children.

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This story has been corrected to show that the latest attack was early Monday.

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